Chris Dixon

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Training for Movements

The Winter 2019 issue of Canadian Dimension features this piece, my “writing with movements” column for the magazine. I’m reposting it here with links included.

We can learn a lot about movements by looking at how – and how much – they train people.

Many activist spaces these days spend time
developing critical analysis through events, writing, and discussion. But as
much as we might wish otherwise, sharp analysis doesn’t automatically translate
into the skills necessary for working in groups, making collaborative plans,
and taking effective action. Successful movements create intentional mechanisms
for helping people to learn such organizing skills.

There are lots of examples in recent
history. The U.S. civil rights movement set up intensive civil disobedience
trainings as well as freedom schools. The women’s liberation movement generated
consciousness raising groups, peer-to-peer education practices, and touring
workshops. The labor movement created summer schools, labor colleges, and worker
education programs; although much less widespread today, some of these spaces continue
to exist.

During the 1970s and 1980s, the direct
action anti-nuclear movement developed a culture of training inspired by the
civil rights and feminist movements. In preparation for large-scale civil
disobedience actions involving hundreds of people, organizers regularly held workshops
on decision-making, direct action, and campaign-building, among other topics. These
trainings, some of which were day-long, combined presentations, facilitated
discussions, and participatory activities, often with role-playing.

As historian and activist Andrew Cornell points out, this
culture of training carried on into many subsequent movements. It was
definitely influential as I came into radical politics in the 1990s. This was a
period when activist skill-building workshops and open, training-oriented
movement gatherings were much more common than they are today.

During this time, a network of experienced
Earth First! organizers offered frequent workshops and touring “roadshows”
focused on popular education around specific campaigns. Copwatch groups trained
interested people in other cities about how to monitor and record local police
activity. Similarly, Anti-Racist Action groups trained people across the
continent in methods for countering white supremacist organizing. Many
activists also routinely traveled to multi-day conferences and other gatherings
that offered workshops on everything from blockades to banner-making, meeting
facilitation to media outreach.

Arguably, this culture of training peaked
with the so-called anti-globalization movement in the late 1990s and early
2000s. What we called “convergences” – gatherings for training and planning – preceded
most of the large summit protests of that era. And during those years, it was
common for groups involved in the movement to hold periodic workshops on topics
such as anti-oppression, consensus decision-making, and direct action, as well
as more specialized trainings for legal observers, street medics, and others.

Since then, there has been a noticeable downturn
in training. Although many experienced activists have mentioned this to me, anarchist
sociologist Lesley Wood is the only one I know who has looked carefully at the
trend. Focusing on North American anarchist gatherings, Wood has recently
documented a marked decline in skill-building workshops since the 1980s. This
is consistent with my experiences at movement gatherings and left spaces more
generally over the last two decades: there seem to be fewer skill-based workshops
and training-oriented gatherings, and the activist trainings that do happen
tend to be less frequent and shorter.

What accounts for this decline? As with
most everything, I’m sure there are many contributing factors. But I suspect
that it has a lot to do with prevailing life circumstances amidst 21st-century
neoliberalism. The material realities of
most people’s lives right now involve lots of precarious low-paid work, much
harm and trauma, tremendous debt, and pressing responsibilities to care for children
and older family members. So many of us feel exhausted, scattered, anxious, and
sped-up. In these circumstances, creating space for training is understandably challenging
and all the more crucial.

I find hope in training initiatives that are persevering – and growing – in these difficult circumstances. This is particularly the case in the U.S., where there are both longstanding organizations, such as Project South and Training for Change, and newer efforts, such as the Institute for Advanced Troublemaking and The Wildfire Project. In the Canadian context, most university-based Public Interest Research Groups (PIRGs) host workshops and, more ambitiously, Tools for Change organizes an annual series of trainings in Toronto. As well, some labor unions continue to hold trainings and experiment with online educational spaces for rank-and-file members. At the time of this writing, I’m also excited about the upcoming PowerShift: Young and Rising conference in Ottawa, which promises a weekend full of workshops for climate justice activists and organizers.

What can we learn about current movements
based on how they’re training people? Activists are struggling mightily, but
our collective capacity is lower than in some previous periods. To build the
large-scale, sustained, combative movements we need, we will have to generate new
and relevant mechanisms for spreading skills.